Ways of Knowing Requirements

The Ways of Knowing Requirements invite students to explore the fundamental question, “How do I know what I know?” The question prompts students to evaluate the origins of knowledge, values, and beliefs, and to question and to revise their determinations when needed. Davidson’s Ways of Knowing Requirements aim to foster and guide students’ exploration of that fundamental question. They are designed to help students understand 1) the relationship between what we know and how we know it; 2) the ways interpretation, analysis, and expression differ across and within disciplines of the liberal arts; and 3) the ways scholars share information and ideas with one another and with the public.

Class of 2021: Each student must complete seven courses fulfilling Ways of Knowing requirements, one course in each of the categories below. The seven courses must come from at least six different departments or programs, as indicated by three-letter prefixes. Continuing students: The eight courses must come from at least seven different departments/programs, as indicated by three-letter course prefixes.

Historical Thought

Courses that seek to understand past human societies and how those societies have evolved over time. Examining documents and/or artifacts to construct broad narratives about the past and how human societies evolved; these courses reveal the constructed ways in which we understand the past and suggest the contingency of how we understand the present.

Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Rhetoric

Courses that develop skills for creating and analyzing the complexities of language, form, and aesthetics through which speakers and writers represent the world or express their ideas about it. These courses explore written and oral forms of expression that invite creative interpretation.

Mathematical and Quantitative Thought

Courses that study mathematical, programming, or statistical concepts. Some of these courses instruct students in making and analyzing numerically based claims about reality; others develop knowledge based on mathematical proof and problem-solving.

Natural Science

Laboratory courses that study the natural and physical world through direct observation, experimentation, and/or analysis of empirical evidence. In these courses, students encounter concepts and models and test them against measurements of natural and physical processes, differentiating knowledge based on testable explanations of phenomena from other kinds of knowledge.

Philosophical and Religious Perspectives

Courses on fundamental questions, philosophical reasoning, and religious thought and practices reflect on questions about knowledge, existence or the social and ethical world; reasoning about the derivation of positions, beliefs or values; or practices forming individual or community identity.

Social-Scientific Thought

Courses that employ systematic analysis of qualitative, quantitative and/or ethnographic information drawn from the human world. These courses develop, test, and explain concepts and theories about human behavior, either individual or collective and differentiate knowledge derived from observations of the human world from other sorts of knowledge.

Visual and Performing Arts

Courses that teach students to represent or express ideas or formulate arguments about how the world is represented in music, theatre, visual art, dance, and screen media. These courses help students build conceptual vocabularies for interpreting and communicating ideas about such works and the formal and aesthetic concerns related to them and/or understand how other have interpreted and communicated these ideas in historical contexts.

Liberal Studies (Class of 2018, 2019, and 2020 only)

Introductory courses accessible to first- or second-year students without prior background in the field that do not fall neatly into one of the seven categories listed above.

Ways of Knowing requirements may also be met with credit from:

No more than two credits attained prior to matriculation at Davidson (or, for transfer students, as a degree candidate at another college) may be applied to the satisfaction of Ways of Knowing requirements. Students may elect which two to apply and may change that selection as late as January of senior year. Selection is made or changed by official notification to the Registrar's Office. This includes the use of Advanced Placement test and International Baccalaureate test credit.

Notes:

Humanities Program: Students completing the two-course sequence will earn three credits and fulfill two Ways of Knowing requirements in addition to the writing requirement.

Courses in the writing program (WRI 101) do not fulfill the Ways of Knowing requirements.

A few departments offer courses with more than one course prefix (e.g., CLA, LAT, and GRE in the Classics Department, and MAT and CSC in the Mathematics Department). Courses with different designations, however, are sufficiently different to meet the goal of breadth across departments/programs.

Ways of Knowing Resources

Curious about what classes fulfill the Ways of Knowing Requirement? Download the list of classes (xls, updated daily).

For a real-time search of open Ways of Knowing classes, click below (login required).